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Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Starting a BBQ Grill Cleaning BusinessPart Twelve

WHAT TO POST... ON FACEBOOK, PINTEREST, AND OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

This is a question that many small business owners seem to lack an answer for.

And what I see during my Internet travels, are a lot of social media channels that seem to be clogged with pretty much useless, self-promotional posts that totally fail to create any sort of engagement with the audience.

That's only one side of the coin, of course. On the other side you find a variety of sites that hardly offer any content at all.

Consequently, a lot of social media channels end up sort of abandoned. This reflects badly on the business, and the lack of updates may have negative SEO-related consequences.

So what can a business do? What can you post? And how often?

Those are the questions I hear every once in a while, and my answer is pretty basic... even simplistic.

Talk about your customers!

Nicely, of course, but talk about what your business has done for them.

Have them pose with the product they bought from you and snap a pic for your social media site, for example. If your business offers pet grooming services, take photos of their pet and plaster them all over your Facebook page and share that with them. Nine out of ten times, they will share those photos with their friends, and the social media circle is then complete.

If you paint houses, take Before & After photos and—again—post them for the world to see and let your customers know. And the same applies whether you clean windows, detail cars, sell collectible toys, own a hair salon, etc., etc., etc.

BBQ GRILLS AS SOCIAL MEDIA STARS

Every time I clean a grill, I take before & after photos. And when I get back home, I post them to several social media channels I maintain for My Grill Pro.

Since I've been doing this type of work for years, it's become quite easy for me to take care of several channels in a matter of minutes, and the reason I post photos of jobs I've done for my clients, is to show prospective customers what it is I have to offer, and I let the photos do the selling.

I don't use a whole bunch of text to describe the cleaning process step-by-step. Instead, I mention the grill brand and model, a few things I might have noticed during the cleaning (rust, lots of buildup, etc.), and the city and neighborhood where the job was done. I do this for SEO reasons.

By the way, do I have any proof that this helps with my SEO efforts?

Nope!

However, MyGrillPro has gone from not being listed on major search engines at all (I launched the site about 2 months ago), to ranking very well for my desired search terms. But again, I have no idea if my social media posts are the reason for that. Personally I believe they have helped a lot, and the page rankings support that, but I have no specific proof.

USING HUMOR

Laughter—as they say—is the best medicine, and when it comes to social media it can help remedy the "boring post" ills.

The easiest way is to find cartoons related to your business and post those (as long as you don't attempt to claim them as yours), on your Facebook or Google+page.

There are thousands out there, you just have to make the time to find and save them. Then credit the source as needed.

Needless to say, some may be offensive, so you will have to decide which ones are okay for your page.

Another option is to find industry-related memes. But as with cartoons, you want to make sure you respect the author's creative rights.

And you can always try to get creative yourself and make your own memes, which will be a bit more time consuming. However, you can customize those to your heart's content.

POST FREQUENCY

How much is too much? I cannot answer that question, but let me say that posting without a specific purpose is a waste of everyone's time, so make your posts count.

Even though I don't have a set rule, I only make a social media post when I have something of value to share. Whether I am posting grill cleaning photos, cartoons I like, or memes I find or create myself, I tend to space the frequency of posts by a day or two, sometimes longer.

I certainly don't want to give the impression of being a social media spammer, and I also understand that the subject matter I deal with is not the most interesting in the world, so I post sparingly, and so far that approach seems to be working.

The one thing I do is respond to either comments or direct messages in a timely fashion, and so should you.

PINTEREST & INSTAGRAM

If you take a lot of photos, you may want to create a Pinterest or Instagram page for your business.

Since I've been a Pinterest user for a few years, I am familiar with the platform so I chose to create a Pinterest page for My Grill Pro.

As with other social media sites, the post frequency is totally up to you.

IN SUM

The thing to keep in mind is to use consistency when it comes to whichever social media channels you develop. As I've mentioned a couple of times, the frequency of posts is not that important. A constant flow is.

So whether you do this a few times a day or once a week, try to be consistent.